I'm a Libertarian living in Humboldt County, CA. I've lived here in Eureka since 1973 and joined the Libertarian Party in 1992. This blog will mostly focus on local political issues, but I may stray into state and national issues as well, when I can't help myself. Please post your comments by clicking on the "comments" link at the bottom of each post. Although I do moderate comments, you need not be a registered user to post them.

Sunday, July 16, 2006

A New Face In Politics

Funny, this is the first I noticed it, but it looks like the Republicans found a new candidate to run against Congressman Mike Thompson. I guess I just wasn't paying close enough attention and, when I saw the old Republican paper candidate, Lawrence Weisner's name, I just assumed he was once again running against Thompson.

I guess not. Weisner's running for State Senate this time and John W. Jones, a retired cop, has thrown his hat in the ring for the first district contest. Not much seems to be known about this fellow and I can't help but wonder if he's just going through the motions?

The Times- Standard article mentions Jones as having a campaign web site, but a Yahoo search turned up nothing, at least in the first few pages of results I went through. His League of Women Voters' Smartvoter page only has his name and e-mail address. Doesn't look good so far.

So, we'll see what this guy has to say, assuming he shows up for any candidate forums. I don't believe Weisner, Jones' predecessor, ever did any candidate forums, at least in Humboldt, but I could be mistaken.

Since there's no libertarian candidate in the 1st district race this time around, I might just pay a little closer attention to this race than I normally would. The last couple times I wasn't going to vote for Weisner, him being War Party, but didn't see any compelling reason to vote for Thompson. I suppose if I thought Weisner actually had a chance to win, I might well have broke with tradition and voted for Thompson.

Not sure how it will go this time. I think Mr. Jones has a tough battle ahead of him, with the odds already stacked against him. I'll have to keep an eye on this and see if Jones is worth wasting my vote on or whether I should bother voting in that race at all.************Update: Mike Harvey just pointed me in the direction of Jones' campaign site.

never fear, the mike thompson thugs will villify him just like all the rest. jones and elizondo will be too polite to fight fire with fire and expose that pro-war closet-case booze industry flunky for the shill he is.

thompson refuses to back the speedy withdrawl of occupation forces and fails to condemn the rampant abuses they commit. he continually votes to fund the war, making him no better than jones. at least elizondo is actually antiwar.

I think you meant to say she IS running again? Yep. She's the perenniel candidate, formerly of the Peace and Freedom Party. She's run for congress umpteen times. I think she switched to the Green Party after the P&F Party lost its status as a recognized political party in California a few years ago.

I will not be voting for Thompson this time. I liked him and have voted for him many times because he seemed to be a true middle-ground guy. But, of late, he has been reciting the party line, repeating the Democratic talking points, and I have lost all respect for him. Partisan animals will not get my cross-over vote.

In particular, he states that Social Security is not broken. We all know that is ridiculoulsy untrue, we have known it since the day we graduated, knowing that we would never see the money we put in. He knows it. Why not work for a solution and put aside the partisan crap?